Biography: life and films
In a career that spans over sixty years, Françoise Arnoul has
appeared in over ninety roles on film and television, although her
period of stardom in the 1950s was tragically brief. Her birth
name is Françoise Annette Marie Mathilde Gautsch and she was
born on 3rd June 1931 in the Algerian city of Constantine. The
daughter of a military man and actress, she has two brothers and spent
her childhood in Algeria, taking dancing lessons from the age of
seven. After the Second World War, she settled in France and took
drama lessons under Andrée Bauer-Thérond. She made
her screen debut at the age of 18 in Willy Rozier's
L'Épave (1949), in the role
that made her an overnight star. (Prior to this, she had had an
uncredited walk-on part in Jacques Becker's
Rendez-vous de juillet).
She then appeared in Jean Boyer's musical comedy
Nous irons à Paris (1950).
Throughout the 1950s, Françoise Arnoul was highly sought after
and would often be cast as the destructive temptress, most notably in
Henri Verneuil's
Le Fruit défendu (1952)
where she starred opposite the iconic performer Fernandel.
Verneuil worked with Arnoul again on the comedy
Le Mouton à cinq pattes
(1954) and bleak melodrama
Des gens sans importance
(1956). In the latter film, Arnoul was paired with an actor, Jean
Gabin, who was to become one of her closest friends. The year
before, she and Gabin had worked together successfully on Jean Renoir's
French Cancan (1954), in which
Arnoul gave one of her most memorable performances. In Marcel
Carné's colourful musical
Le Pays, d'où je viens
(1956), Arnoul notched up another box office hit, before finding her
way into Roger Vadim's sizzlingly sensual world in
Sait-on jamais? (1957).
Henri Decoin then gave her one of her most famous roles, as the
seductive spy Cora in
La Chatte (1958) and its
sequel
La Chatte sort ses griffes
(1960).
In the 1960s, Arnoul's presence in cinema was less noticeable, as the
actress spent more of her time supporting political causes with her
second husband, the filmmaker Bernard Paul (whom she met during the
making of Costa-Gavras'
Compartiment tueurs in
1964). She showed her support for abortion by adding her name to
the famous 'Manifesto of the 343 sluts', declaring that she herself had
had an abortion (a criminal offence in France at the time). For
the rest of her career, Arnoul would be relegated to supporting roles,
in such diverse films as Jacques Rouffio's
Violette & François
(1977) and Brigitte Roüan's
Post coïtum animal triste
(1997). More recently, she has been seen mainly on television, in
TV films that include
Duval: Un mort
de trop (2001) and
Le
Voyageur de la Toussaint (2007).
© James Travers 2013
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